REPRODUCING THE ORIGINAL TEXT BOTH AS FIRST ISSUEDAND AS CORRECTED BY ITS AUTHORS

WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND INDEX

BY

HENRY MORLEY

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. I.

1891

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EACH IN THREE VOLS., PRICE 10s. 6d.

CHARLES KNIGHT'S SHAKSPERE.

NAPIER'S HISTORY OF THE PENINSULAR WAR. With Maps and Plans.

LONGFELLOW'S WORKS--Poems--Prose--Dante.

BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. With Illustrations.

MOTLEY'S RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.

BYRON'S POETICAL WORKS.

INTRODUCTION

When Richard Steele, in number 555 of his 'Spectator', signed its lastpaper and named those who had most helped him

'to keep up the spirit of so long and approved a performance,'

he gave chief honour to one who had on his page, as in his heart, noname but Friend. This was

'the gentleman of whose assistance I formerly boasted in the Preface and concluding Leaf of my 'Tatlers'. I am indeed much more proud of his long-continued Friendship, than I should be of the fame of being thought the author of any writings which he himself is capable of producing. I remember when I finished the 'Tender Husband', I told him there was nothing I so ardently wished, as that we might some time or other publish a work, written by us both, which should bear the name of THE MONUMENT, in Memory of our Friendship.'

Why he refers to such a wish, his next words show. The seven volumes ofthe 'Spectator', then complete, were to his mind The Monument, and ofthe Friendship it commemorates he wrote,

'I heartily wish what I have done here were as honorary to that sacred name as learning, wit, and humanity render those pieces which I have taught the reader how to distinguish for his.'

So wrote Steele; and the 'Spectator' will bear witness how religiouslyhis friendship was returned. In number 453, when, paraphrasing David'sHymn on Gratitude, the 'rising soul' of Addison surveyed the mercies ofhis God, was it not Steele whom he felt near to him at the Mercy-seat ashe wrote

Thy bounteous hand with worldly bliss Has made my cup run o'er, And in a kind and faithful Friend Has doubled all my store?

The _Spectator_, Steele-and-Addison's _Spectator_, is a monumentbefitting the most memorable friendship in our history. Steele was itsprojector, founder, editor, and he was writer of that part of it whichtook the widest grasp upon the hearts of men. His sympathies were withall England. Defoe and he, with eyes upon the future, were the truestleaders of their time. It was the firm hand of his friend Steele thathelped Addison up to the place in literature which became him. It wasSteele who caused the nice critical taste which Addison might have spentonly in accordance with the fleeting fashions of his time, to beinspired with all Addison's religious earnestness, and to be enlivenedwith the free play of that sportive humour, delicately whimsical andgaily wise, which made his conversation the delight of the few men withwhom he sat at ease. It was Steele who drew his friend towards the daysto come, and made his gifts the wealth of a whole people. Steele said inone of the later numbers of his _Spectator_, No. 532, to which heprefixed a motto that assigned to himself only the part of whetstone tothe wit of others,

'I claim to myself the merit of having extorted excellent productions from a person of the greatest abilities, who would not have let them appear by any other means.'

There were those who argued that he was too careless of his own fame inunselfish labour for the exaltation of his friend, and, no doubt, hisrare generosity of temper has been often misinterpreted. But for thatAddison is not answerable. And why should Steele have defined his ownmerits? He knew his countrymen, and was in too genuine accord with thespirit of a time then distant but now come, to doubt that, when he wasdead, his whole life's work would speak truth for him to posterity.

The friendship of which this work is the monument remained unbroken fromboyhood until death. Addison and Steele were schoolboys together at theCharterhouse. Addison was a dean's son, and a private boarder; Steele,fatherless, and a boy on the foundation. They were of like age. Theregister of Steele's baptism, corroborated by the entry made on hisadmission to the Charterhouse (which also implies that he was baptizedon the day of his birth) is March 12, 1671, Old Style; New Style, 1672.Addison was born on May-day, 1672. Thus there was a difference of onlyseven weeks.

Steele's father according to the register, also named Richard, was anattorney in Dublin. Steele seems to draw from experience--although he isnot writing as of himself or bound to any truth of personal detail--whenin No. 181 of the 'Tatler' he speaks of his father as having died whenhe was not quite five years of age, and of his mother as 'a verybeautiful woman, of a noble spirit.' The first Duke of Ormond isreferred to by Steele in his Dedication to the 'Lying Lover' as thepatron of his infancy; and it was by this nobleman that a place wasfound for him, when in his thirteenth year, among the foundation boys atthe Charterhouse, where he first met with Joseph Addison. Addison, whowas at school at Lichfield in 1683-4-5, went to the Charterhouse in1686, and left in 1687, when he was entered of Queen's College, Oxford.Steele went to Oxford two years later, matriculating at Christ Church,March 13, 1689-90, the year in which Addison was elected a Demy ofMagdalene. A letter of introduction from Steele, dated April 2, 1711,refers to the administration of the will of 'my uncle Gascoigne, towhose bounty I owe a liberal education.' This only representative of thefamily ties into which Steele was born, an 'uncle' whose surname is notthat of Steele's mother before marriage, appears, therefore, to havedied just before or at the time when the 'Spectator' undertook topublish a sheetful of thoughts every morning, and--Addison here speakingfor him--looked forward to

'leaving his country, when he was summoned out of it, with the secret satisfaction of thinking that he had not lived in vain.'

To Steele's warm heart Addison's friendship stood for all home blessingshe had missed. The sister's playful grace, the brother's love, themother's sympathy and simple faith in God, the father's guidance, wherewere these for Steele, if not in his friend Addison?

Addison's father was a dean; his mother was the sister of a bishop; andhis ambition as a schoolboy, or his father's ambition for him, was onlythat he should be one day a prosperous and pious dignitary of theChurch. But there was in him, as in Steele, the genius which shapedtheir lives to its own uses, and made them both what they are to us now.Joseph Addison was born into a home which the steadfast labour of hisfather, Lancelot, had made prosperous and happy. Lancelot Addison hadearned success. His father, Joseph's grandfather, had been also aclergyman, but he was one of those Westmoreland clergy of whosesimplicity and poverty many a joke has been made. Lancelot got hiseducation as a poor child in the Appleby Grammar School; but he made hisown way when at College; was too avowed a Royalist to satisfy theCommonwealth, and got, for his zeal, at the Restoration, small reward ina chaplaincy to the garrison at Dunkirk. This was changed, for theworse, to a position of the same sort at Tangier, where he remainedeight years. He lost that office by misadventure, and would have beenleft destitute if Mr. Joseph Williamson had not given him a living ofL120 a-year at Milston in Wiltshire. Upon this Lancelot Addison marriedJane Gulstone, who was the daughter of a Doctor of Divinity, and whosebrother became Bishop of Bristol. In the little Wiltshire parsonageJoseph Addison and his younger brothers and sisters were born. Theessayist was named Joseph after his father's patron, afterwards SirJoseph Williamson, a friend high in office. While the children grew, thefather worked. He showed his ability and loyalty in books on WestBarbary, and Mahomet, and the State of the Jews; and he became one ofthe King's chaplains in ordinary at a time when his patron JosephWilliamson was Secretary of State. Joseph Addison was then but threeyears old. Soon afterwards the busy father became Archdeacon ofSalisbury, and he was made Dean of Lichfield in 1683, when his boyJoseph had reached the age of 11. When Archdeacon of Salisbury, the Rev.Lancelot Addison sent Joseph to school at Salisbury; and when his fatherbecame Dean of Lichfield, Joseph was sent to school at Lichfield, asbefore said, in the years 1683-4-5. And then he was sent as a privatepupil to the Charterhouse. The friendship he there formed with Steelewas ratified by the approval of the Dean. The desolate boy with the warmheart, bright intellect, and noble aspirations, was carried home by hisfriend, at holiday times, into the Lichfield Deanery, where, Steelewrote afterwards to Congreve in a Dedication of the 'Drummer',

'were things of this nature to be exposed to public view, I could show under the Dean's own hand, in the warmest terms, his blessing on the friendship between his son and me; nor had he a child who did not prefer me in the first place of kindness and esteem, as their father loved me like one of them.'

Addison had two brothers, of whom one traded and became Governor of FortGeorge in India, and the other became, like himself, a Fellow ofMagdalene College, Oxford. Of his three sisters two died young, theother married twice, her first husband being a French refugee ministerwho became a Prebendary of Westminster. Of this sister of Addison's,Swift said she was 'a sort of wit, very like him. I was not fond of her.'

In the latter years of the seventeenth century, when Steele and Addisonwere students at Oxford, most English writers were submissive to the newstrength of the critical genius of France. But the English nation hadthen newly accomplished the great Revolution that secured its liberties,was thinking for itself, and calling forth the energies of writers whospoke for the people and looked to the people for approval and support.A new period was then opening, of popular influence on Englishliterature. They were the young days of the influence now full grown,then slowly getting strength and winning the best minds away from animported Latin style adapted to the taste of patrons who sought creditfor nice critical discrimination. In 1690 Addison had been three years,Steele one year, at Oxford. Boileau was then living, fifty-four yearsold; and Western Europe was submissive to his sway as the great monarchof literary criticism. Boileau was still living when Steele publishedhis 'Tatler', and died in the year of the establishment of the'Spectator'. Boileau, a true-hearted man, of genius and sense, advancedhis countrymen from the nice weighing of words by the Precieuses and thegrammarians, and by the French Academy, child of the intercourse betweenthose ladies and gentlemen. He brought ridicule on the inane politenessof a style then in its decrepitude, and bade the writers of his timefind models in the Latin writers who, like Virgil and Horace, hadbrought natural thought and speech to their perfection. In the precedinglabour for the rectifying of the language, preference had been given toFrench words of Latin origin. French being one of those languages inwhich Latin is the chief constituent, this was but a fair following ofthe desire to make it run pure from its source.

If the English critics who, in Charles the Second's time, submitted toFrench law, had seen its spirit, instead of paying blind obedience tothe letter, they also would have looked back to the chief source oftheir language. Finding this to be not Latin but Saxon, they would havesought to give it strength and harmony, by doing then what, in thecourse of nature, we have learnt again to do, now that the patronage ofliterature has gone from the cultivated noble who appreciates in muchaccordance with the fashion of his time, and passed into the holding ofthe English people. Addison and Steele lived in the transition timebetween these periods. They were born into one of them and--Steeleimmediately, Addison through Steele's influence upon him--they weretrusty guides into the other. Thus the 'Spectator' is not merely thebest example of their skill. It represents also, perhaps bestrepresents, a wholesome Revolution in our Literature. The essentialcharacter of English Literature was no more changed than characters ofEnglishmen were altered by the Declaration of Right which Prince Williamof Orange had accepted with the English Crown, when Addison had latelyleft and Steele was leaving Charterhouse for Oxford. Yet change therewas, and Steele saw to the heart of it, even in his College days.

Oxford, in times not long past, had inclined to faith in divine right ofkings. Addison's father, a church dignitary who had been a Royalistduring the Civil War, laid stress upon obedience to authority in Churchand State. When modern literature was discussed or studied at Oxfordthere would be the strongest disposition to maintain the commonlyaccepted authority of French critics, who were really men of greatability, correcting bad taste in their predecessors, and conciliatingscholars by their own devout acceptance of the purest Latin authors asthe types of a good style or proper method in the treatment of asubject. Young Addison found nothing new to him in the temper of hisUniversity, and was influenced, as in his youth every one must andshould be, by the prevalent tone of opinion in cultivated men. But hehad, and felt that he had, wit and genius of his own. His sensitive mindwas simply and thoroughly religious, generous in its instincts, andstrengthened in its nobler part by close communion with the mind of hisfriend Steele.

May we not think of the two friends together in a College chamber,Addison of slender frame, with features wanting neither in dignity norin refinement, Steele of robust make, with the radiant 'short face' ofthe 'Spectator', by right of which he claimed for that worthy hisadmission to the Ugly Club. Addison reads Dryden, in praise of whom hewrote his earliest known verse; or reads endeavours of his own, whichhis friend Steele warmly applauds. They dream together of the future;Addison sage, but speculative, and Steele practical, if rash. Each isdisposed to find God in the ways of life, and both avoid that outwardshow of irreligion, which, after the recent Civil Wars, remains yetcommon in the country, as reaction from an ostentatious piety which laidon burdens of restraint; a natural reaction which had been intensifiedby the base influence of a profligate King. Addison, bred among thepreachers, has a little of the preacher's abstract tone, when talkbetween the friends draws them at times into direct expression of thesacred sense of life which made them one.

Apart also from the mere accidents of his childhood, a speculative turnin Addison is naturally stronger than in Steele. He relishes analysis ofthought. Steele came as a boy from the rough world of shame and sorrow;his great, kindly heart is most open to the realities of life, the stateand prospects of his country, direct personal sympathies; actual wrongs,actual remedies. Addison is sensitive, and has among strangers thereserve of speech and aspect which will pass often for coldness andpride, but is, indeed, the shape taken by modesty in thoughtful menwhose instinct it is to speculate and analyze, and who becomeself-conscious, not through conceit, but because they cannot helpturning their speculations also on themselves. Steele wholly comes outof himself as his heart hastens to meet his friend. He lives in hissurroundings, and, in friendly intercourse, fixes his whole thought onthe worth of his companion. Never abating a jot of his ideal of a trueand perfect life, or ceasing to uphold the good because he cannot liveto the full height of his own argument, he is too frank to conceal theleast or greatest of his own shortcomings. Delight and strength of afriendship like that between Steele and Addison are to be found, as manyfind them, in the charm and use of a compact where characters differ somuch that one lays open as it were a fresh world to the other, and eachdraws from the other aid of forces which the friendship makes his own.But the deep foundations of this friendship were laid in the religiousearnestness that was alike in both; and in religious earnestness arelaid also the foundations of this book, its Monument.

Both Addison and Steele wrote verse at College. From each of them wehave a poem written at nearly the same age: Addison's in April, 1694,Steele's early in 1695. Addison drew from literature a metrical 'Accountof the Greatest English Poets.' Steele drew from life the grief ofEngland at the death of William's Queen, which happened on the 28th ofDecember, 1694.

Addison, writing in that year, and at the age of about 23, for a Collegefriend,

A short account of all the Muse-possest, That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes,

was so far under the influence of French critical authority, as acceptedby most cultivators of polite literature at Oxford and whereverauthority was much respected, that from 'An Account of the GreatestEnglish Poets' he omitted Shakespeare. Of Chaucer he then knew no betterthan to say, what might have been said in France, that

... age has rusted what the Poet writ, Worn out his language, and obscured his wit: In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain, And tries to make his readers laugh in vain. Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetic rage, In ancient tales amused a barb'rous age; But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore, Can charm an understanding age no more.

It cost Addison some trouble to break loose from the critical cobweb ofan age of periwigs and patches, that accounted itself 'understanding,'and the grand epoch of our Elizabethan literature, 'barbarous.' Rymer,one of his critics, had said, that

'in the neighing of an horse, or in the growling of a mastiff, there is a meaning, there is as lively expression, and, may I say, more humanity than many times in the tragical flights of Shakespeare.'

Addison, with a genius of his own helped to free movement by thesympathies of Steele, did break through the cobwebs of the critics; buthe carried off a little of their web upon his wings. We see it when inthe 'Spectator' he meets the prejudices of an 'understanding age,' andpartly satisfies his own, by finding reason for his admiration of 'ChevyChase' and the 'Babes in the Wood', in their great similarity to worksof Virgil. We see it also in some of the criticisms which accompany hisadmirable working out of the resolve to justify his true naturaladmiration of the poetry of Milton, by showing that 'Paradise Lost' wasplanned after the manner of the ancients, and supreme even in itsobedience to the laws of Aristotle. In his 'Spectator' papers onImagination he but half escapes from the conventions of his time, whichdetested the wildness of a mountain pass, thought Salisbury Plain one ofthe finest prospects in England, planned parks with circles and straightlines of trees, despised our old cathedrals for their 'Gothic' art, andsaw perfection in the Roman architecture, and the round dome of St.Paul's. Yet in these and all such papers of his we find that Addison hadbroken through the weaker prejudices of the day, opposing them withsound natural thought of his own. Among cultivated readers, lessermoulders of opinion, there can be no doubt that his genius was only themore serviceable in amendment of the tastes of his own time, forfriendly understanding and a partial sharing of ideas for which it gaveitself no little credit.

It is noticeable, however, that in his Account of the Greatest EnglishPoets, young Addison gave a fifth part of the piece to expression of theadmiration he felt even then for Milton. That his appreciation becamecritical, and, although limited, based on a sense of poetry whichbrought him near to Milton, Addison proved in the 'Spectator' by hiseighteen Saturday papers upon 'Paradise Lost'. But it was from thereligious side that he first entered into the perception of itsgrandeur. His sympathy with its high purpose caused him to praise, inthe same pages that commended 'Paradise Lost' to his countrymen, another'epic,' Blackmore's 'Creation', a dull metrical treatise againstatheism, as a work which deserved to be looked upon as

'one of the most useful and noble productions of our English verse. The reader,' he added, of a piece which shared certainly with Salisbury Plain the charms of flatness and extent of space, 'the reader cannot but be pleased to find the depths of philosophy enlivened with all the charms of poetry, and to see so great a strength of reason amidst so beautiful a redundancy of the imagination.'

The same strong sympathy with Blackmore's purpose in it blinded Dr.Johnson also to the failure of this poem, which is Blackmore's best.From its religious side, then, it may be that Addison, when a student atOxford, first took his impressions of the poetry of Milton. At Oxford heaccepted the opinion of France on Milton's art, but honestly declared,in spite of that, unchecked enthusiasm:

Whate'er his pen describes I more than see, Whilst every verse, arrayed in majesty, Bold and sublime, my whole attention draws, And seems above the critic's nicer laws.

This chief place among English poets Addison assigned to Milton, withhis mind fresh from the influences of a father who had openly contemnedthe Commonwealth, and by whom he had been trained so to regard Milton'sservice of it that of this he wrote:

Oh, had the Poet ne'er profaned his pen, To varnish o'er the guilt of faithless men; His other works might have deserved applause But now the language can't support the cause, While the clean current, tho' serene and bright, Betrays a bottom odious to the sight.

If we turn now to the verse written by Steele in his young Oxford days,and within twelve months of the date of Addison's lines upon Englishpoets, we have what Steele called 'The Procession.' It is the processionof those who followed to the grave the good Queen Mary, dead ofsmall-pox, at the age of 32. Steele shared his friend Addison's delightin Milton, and had not, indeed, got beyond the sixth number of the'Tatler' before he compared the natural beauty and innocence of Milton'sAdam and Eve with Dryden's treatment of their love. But the one man forwhom Steele felt most enthusiasm was not to be sought through books, hewas a living moulder of the future of the nation. Eagerly intent uponKing William, the hero of the Revolution that secured our liberties, theyoung patriot found in him also the hero of his verse. Keen sense of therealities about him into which Steele had been born, spoke through thevery first lines of this poem:

The days of man are doom'd to pain and strife, Quiet and ease are foreign to our life; No satisfaction is, below, sincere, Pleasure itself has something that's severe.

Britain had rejoiced in the high fortune of King William, and now amourning world attended his wife to the tomb. The poor were her firstand deepest mourners, poor from many causes; and then Steele pictured,with warm sympathy, form after form of human suffering. Among thosemourning poor were mothers who, in the despair of want, would havestabbed infants sobbing for their food,

But in the thought they stopp'd, their locks they tore, Threw down the steel, and cruelly forbore. The innocents their parents' love forgive, Smile at their fate, nor know they are to live.

To the mysteries of such distress the dead queen penetrated, by her'cunning to be good.' After the poor, marched the House of Commons inthe funeral procession. Steele gave only two lines to it:

With dread concern, the awful Senate came, Their grief, as all their passions, is the same. The next Assembly dissipates our fears, The stately, mourning throng of British Peers.

A factious intemperance then characterized debates of the Commons, whilethe House of Lords stood in the front of the Revolution, and secured thepermanency of its best issues. Steele describes, as they pass, Ormond,Somers, Villars, who leads the horse of the dead queen, that 'heavesinto big sighs when he would neigh'--the verse has in it crudity as wellas warmth of youth--and then follow the funeral chariot, the jewelledmourners, and the ladies of the court,

Their clouded beauties speak man's gaudy strife, The glittering miseries of human life.

I yet see, Steele adds, this queen passing to her coronation in theplace whither she now is carried to her grave. On the way, throughacclamations of her people, to receive her crown,

She unconcerned and careless all the while Rewards their loud applauses with a smile, With easy Majesty and humble State Smiles at the trifle Power, and knows its date.

But now

What hands commit the beauteous, good, and just, The dearer part of William, to the dust? In her his vital heat, his glory lies, In her the Monarch lived, in her he dies. ... No form of state makes the Great Man forego The task due to her love and to his woe; Since his kind frame can't the large suffering bear In pity to his People, he's not here: For to the mighty loss we now receive The next affliction were to see him grieve.

If we look from these serious strains of their youth to the literaryexpression of the gayer side of character in the two friends, we findAddison sheltering his taste for playful writing behind a Roman Wall ofhexameter. For among his Latin poems in the Oxford 'Musae Anglicanae' areeighty or ninety lines of resonant Latin verse upon 'MachinaeGesticulantes, 'anglice' A Puppet-show.' Steele, taking life as he foundit, and expressing mirth in his own way of conversation, wrote anEnglish comedy, and took the word of a College friend that it wasvalueless. There were two paths in life then open to an English writer.One was the smooth and level way of patronage; the other a rough up-hilltrack for men who struggled in the service of the people. The way ofpatronage was honourable. The age had been made so very discerning bythe Romans and the French that a true understanding of the beauties ofliterature was confined to the select few who had been taught what toadmire. Fine writing was beyond the rude appreciation of the multitude.Had, therefore, the reading public been much larger than it was, men offastidious taste, who paid as much deference to polite opinion asAddison did in his youth, could have expected only audience fit but few,and would have been without encouragement to the pursuit of lettersunless patronage rewarded merit. The other way had charms only for thestout-hearted pioneer who foresaw where the road was to be made that nowis the great highway of our literature. Addison went out into the worldby the way of his time; Steele by the way of ours.

Addison, after the campaign of 1695, offered to the King the homage of apaper of verses on the capture of Namur, and presented them through SirJohn Somers, then Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. To Lord Somers he sentwith them a flattering dedicatory address. Somers, who was esteemed aman of taste, was not unwilling to 'receive the present of a museunknown.' He asked Addison to call upon him, and became his patron.Charles Montagu, afterwards Earl of Halifax, critic and wit himself,shone also among the statesmen who were known patrons of letters. Alsoto him, who was a prince of patrons 'fed with soft dedication all daylong,' Addison introduced himself. To him, in 1697, as it was part ofhis public fame to be a Latin scholar, Addison, also a skilful Latinist,addressed, in Latin, a paper of verses on the Peace of Ryswick. WithSomers and Montagu for patrons, the young man of genius who wished tothrive might fairly commit himself to the service of the Church, forwhich he had been bred by his father; but Addison's tact and refinementpromised to be serviceable to the State, and so it was that, as Steeletells us, Montagu made Addison a layman.

'His arguments were founded upon the general pravity and corruption of men of business, who wanted liberal education. And I remember, as if I had read the letter yesterday, that my Lord ended with a compliment, that, however he might be represented as no friend to the Church, he never would do it any other injury than keeping Mr. Addison out of it.'

To the good offices of Montagu and Somers, Addison was indebted,therefore, in 1699, for a travelling allowance of L300 a year. The grantwas for his support while qualifying himself on the continent by studyof modern languages, and otherwise, for diplomatic service. It droppedat the King's death, in the spring of 1702, and Addison was cast uponhis own resources; but he throve, and lived to become an Under-Secretaryof State in days that made Prior an Ambassador, and rewarded withofficial incomes Congreve, Rowe, Hughes, Philips, Stepney, and others.Throughout his honourable career prudence dictated to Addison more orless of dependence on the friendship of the strong. An honest friend ofthe popular cause, he was more ready to sell than give his pen to it;although the utmost reward would at no time have tempted him to throwhis conscience into the bargain. The good word of Halifax obtained himfrom Godolphin, in 1704, the Government order for a poem on the Battleof Blenheim, with immediate earnest of payment for it in the office of aCommissioner of Appeal in the Excise worth L200 a year. For thissubstantial reason Addison wrote the 'Campaign'; and upon its success,he obtained the further reward of an Irish Under-secretaryship.

The 'Campaign' is not a great poem. Reams of 'Campaigns' would not havemade Addison's name, what it now is, a household word among hiscountrymen. The 'Remarks on several Parts of Italy, &c.,' in whichAddison followed up the success of his 'Campaign' with notes of foreigntravel, represent him visiting Italy as 'Virgil's Italy,' the land ofthe great writers in Latin, and finding scenery or customs of the peopleeloquent of them at every turn. He crammed his pages with quotation fromVirgil and Horace, Ovid and Tibullus, Propertius, Lucan, Juvenal andMartial, Lucretius, Statius, Claudian, Silius Italicus, Ausonius,Seneca, Phaedrus, and gave even to his 'understanding age' an overdose ofits own physic for all ills of literature. He could not see a pyramid ofjugglers standing on each other's shoulders, without observing how itexplained a passage in Claudian which shows that the Venetians were notthe inventors of this trick. But Addison's short original accounts ofcities and states that he saw are pleasant as well as sensible, and hereand there, as in the space he gives to a report of St. Anthony's sermonto the fishes, or his short account of a visit to the opera at Venice,there are indications of the humour that was veiled, not crushed, undera sense of classical propriety. In his account of the political state ofNaples and in other passages, there is mild suggestion also of the loveof liberty, a part of the fine nature of Addison which had been slightlywarmed by contact with the generous enthusiasm of Steele. In hispoetical letter to Halifax written during his travels Addison gave thesum of his prose volume when he told how he felt himself

... on classic ground. For here the Muse so oft her harp hath strung, That not a mountain rears its head unsung; Renown'd in verse each shady thicket grows, And ev'ry stream in heav'nly numbers flows.

But he was writing to a statesman of the Revolution, who was hispolitical patron, just then out of office, and propriety suggested suchpersonal compliment as calling the Boyne a Tiber, and Halifax animprovement upon Virgil; while his heart was in the closing emphasis,also proper to the occasion, which dwelt on the liberty that gives theirsmile to the barren rocks and bleak mountains of Britannia's isle, whilefor Italy, rich in the unexhausted stores of nature, proud Oppression inher valleys reigns, and tyranny usurps her happy plains. Addison's wereformal raptures, and he knew them to be so, when he wrote,

I bridle in my struggling Muse with pain, That longs to launch into a bolder strain.

Richard Steele was not content with learning to be bold. Eager, at thatturning point of her national life, to serve England with strength ofarm, at least, if not with the good brains which he was neitherencouraged nor disposed to value highly, Steele's patriotism impelledhim to make his start in the world, not by the way of patronage, but byenlisting himself as a private in the Coldstream Guards. By so doing heknew that he offended a relation, and lost a bequest. As he said ofhimself afterwards,

'when he mounted a war-horse, with a great sword in his hand, and planted himself behind King William III against Louis XIV, he lost the succession to a very good estate in the county of Wexford, in Ireland, from the same humour which he has preserved, ever since, of preferring the state of his mind to that of his fortune.'

Steele entered the Duke of Ormond's regiment, and had reasons forenlistment. James Butler, the first Duke, whom his father served, hadsent him to the Charterhouse. That first Duke had been Chancellor of theUniversity at Oxford, and when he died, on the 21st of July, 1688, ninemonths before Steele entered to Christchurch, his grandson, anotherJames Butler, succeeded to the Dukedom. This second Duke of Ormond wasalso placed by the University of Oxford in his grandfather's office ofChancellor. He went with King William to Holland in 1691, shared thedefeat of William in the battle of Steinkirk in August, 1692, and wastaken prisoner in July, 1693, when King William was defeated at Landen.These defeats encouraged the friends of the Stuarts, and in 1694,Bristol, Exeter and Boston adhered to King James. Troops were raised inthe North of England to assist his cause. In 1696 there was theconspiracy of Sir George Barclay to seize William on the 15th ofFebruary. Captain Charnock, one of the conspirators, had been a Fellowof Magdalene. On the 23rd of February the plot was laid beforeParliament. There was high excitement throughout the country. LoyalAssociations were formed. The Chancellor of the University of Oxford wasa fellow-soldier of the King's, and desired to draw strength to hisregiment from the enthusiasm of the time. Steele's heart was with thecause of the Revolution, and he owed also to the Ormonds a kind offamily allegiance. What was more natural than that he should be amongthose young Oxford men who were tempted to enlist in the Chancellor'sown regiment for the defence of liberty? Lord Cutts, the Colonel of theRegiment, made Steele his Secretary, and got him an Ensign's commission.It was then that he wrote his first book, the 'Christian Hero', of whichthe modest account given by Steele himself long afterwards, when put onhis defence by the injurious violence of faction, is as follows:

'He first became an author when an Ensign of the Guards, a way of life exposed to much irregularity; and being thoroughly convinced of many things, of which he often repented, and which he more often repeated, he writ, for his own private use, a little book called the 'Christian Hero', with a design principally to fix upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion, in opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasures. This secret admiration was too weak; he therefore printed the book with his name, in hopes that a standing testimony against himself, and the eyes of the world (that is to say, of his acquaintance) upon him in a new light, would make him ashamed of understanding and seeming to feel what was virtuous, and living so contrary a life.'

Among his brother soldiers, and fresh from the Oxford worship of oldclassical models, the religious feeling that accompanies all truerefinement, and that was indeed part of the English nature in him as inAddison, prompted Steele to write this book, in which he opposed to thefashionable classicism of his day a sound reflection that the heroism ofCato or Brutus had far less in it of true strength, and far lessadaptation to the needs of life, than the unfashionable ChristianHeroism set forth by the Sermon on the Mount.

According to the second title of this book it is 'an Argument, provingthat no Principles but those of Religion are sufficient to make a GreatMan.' It is addressed to Lord Cutts in a dedication dated from theTower-Yard, March 23, 1701, and is in four chapters, of which the firsttreats of the heroism of the ancient world, the second connects man withhis Creator, by the Bible Story and the Life and Death of Christ, thethird defines the Christian as set forth by the character and teachingof St. Paul, applying the definition practically to the daily life ofSteele's own time. In the last chapter he descends from theconsideration of those bright incentives to a higher life, and treats ofthe ordinary passions and interests of men, the common springs of action(of which, he says, the chief are Fame and Conscience) which he declaresto be best used and improved when joined with religion; and here allculminates in a final strain of patriotism, closing with the characterof King William, 'that of a glorious captain, and (what he much morevalues than the most splendid titles) that of a sincere and honest man.'This was the character of William which, when, in days of meaner publicstrife, Steele quoted it years afterwards in the _Spectator_, he brokeoff painfully and abruptly with a

... Fuit Ilium, et ingens Gloria.

Steele's 'Christian Hero' obtained many readers. Its fifth edition wasappended to the first collection of the 'Tatler' into volumes, at thetime of the establishment of the 'Spectator'. The old bent of theEnglish mind was strong in Steele, and he gave unostentatiously a livelywit to the true service of religion, without having spoken or written tothe last day of his life a word of mere religious cant. One officerthrust a duel on him for his zeal in seeking to make peace between himand another comrade. Steele, as an officer, then, or soon afterwards,made a Captain of Fusiliers, could not refuse to fight, but stood on thedefensive; yet in parrying a thrust his sword pierced his antagonist,and the danger in which he lay quickened that abiding detestation of thepractice of duelling, which caused Steele to attack it in his plays, inhis 'Tatler', in his 'Spectator', with persistent energy.

Of the 'Christian Hero' his companions felt, and he himself saw, thatthe book was too didactic. It was indeed plain truth out of Steele'sheart, but an air of superiority, freely allowed only to theprofessional man teaching rules of his own art, belongs to a toodidactic manner. Nothing was more repugnant to Steele's nature than thesense of this. He had defined the Christian as 'one who is always abenefactor, with the mien of a receiver.' And that was his owncharacter, which was, to a fault, more ready to give than to receive,more prompt to ascribe honour to others than to claim it for himself. Toright himself, Steele wrote a light-hearted comedy, 'The Funeral', or'Grief a la Mode'; but at the core even of that lay the greatearnestness of his censure against the mockery and mummery of grief thatshould be sacred; and he blended with this, in the character of LawyerPuzzle, a protest against mockery of truth and justice by theintricacies of the law. The liveliness of this comedy made Steelepopular with the wits; and the inevitable touches of the author'spatriotism brought on him also the notice of the Whigs. Party men might,perhaps, already feel something of the unbending independence that wasin Steele himself, as in this play he made old Lord Brumpton teach it tohis son:

King William, perhaps, had he lived, could fairly have recognized inSteele the social form of that sound mind which in Defoe was solitary.In a later day it was to Steele a proud recollection that his name, tobe provided for, 'was in the last table-book ever worn by the gloriousand immortal William III.'

The 'Funeral', first acted with great success in 1702, was followed inthe next year by 'The Tender Husband', to which Addison contributed sometouches, for which Addison wrote a Prologue, and which Steele dedicatedto Addison, who would 'be surprised,' he said, 'in the midst of a dailyand familiar conversation, with an address which bears so distant an airas a public dedication.' Addison and his friend were then thirty-oneyears old. Close friends when boys, they are close friends now in theprime of manhood. It was after they had blended wits over the writing ofthis comedy that Steele expressed his wish for a work, written by both,which should serve as THE MONUMENT to their most happy friendship. WhenAddison and Steele were amused together with the writing of this comedy,Addison, having lost his immediate prospect of political employment, andhis salary too, by King William's death in the preceding year, had comehome from his travels. On his way home he had received, in September, atthe Hague, news of his father's death. He wrote from the Hague, to Mr.Wyche,

'At my first arrival I received the news of my father's death, and ever since have been engaged in so much noise and company, that it was impossible for me to think of rhyming in it.'

As his father's eldest son, he had, on his return to England, familyaffairs to arrange, and probably some money to receive. Though attachedto a party that lost power at the accession of Queen Anne, and waitingfor new employment, Addison--who had declined the Duke of Somerset'sover-condescending offer of a hundred a year and all expenses astravelling tutor to his son, the Marquis of Hertford--was able, whilelodging poorly in the Haymarket, to associate in London with the men bywhose friendship he hoped to rise, and was, with Steele, admitted intothe select society of wits, and men of fashion who affected wit and tookwits for their comrades, in the Kitcat Club. When in 1704 Marlborough'svictory at Blenheim revived the Whig influence, the suggestion ofHalifax to Lord Treasurer Godolphin caused Addison to be applied to forhis poem of the 'Campaign'. It was after the appearance of this poemthat Steele's play was printed, with the dedication to his friend, inwhich he said,

'I look upon my intimacy with you as one of the most valuable enjoyments of my life. At the same time I make the town no ill compliment for their kind acceptance of this comedy, in acknowledging that it has so far raised my opinion of it, as to make me think it no improper memorial of an inviolable Friendship. I should not offer it to you as such, had I not been very careful to avoid everything that might look ill-natured, immoral, or prejudicial to what the better part of mankind hold sacred and honourable.'

This was the common ground between the friends. Collier's 'Short View ofthe Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage' had been publishedin 1698; it attacked a real evil, if not always in the right way, andCongreve's reply to it had been a failure. Steele's comedies with alltheir gaiety and humour were wholly free from the garnish of oaths andunwholesome expletives which his contemporaries seemed to thinkessential to stage emphasis. Each comedy of his was based onseriousness, as all sound English wit has been since there have beenwriters in England. The gay manner did not conceal all the earnestthoughts that might jar with the humour of the town; and thus Steele wasable to claim, by right of his third play, 'the honour of being the onlyEnglish dramatist who had had a piece damned for its piety.'

This was the 'Lying Lover', produced in 1704, an adaptation fromCorneille in which we must allow that Steele's earnestness in upholdingtruth and right did cause him to spoil the comedy. The play wasafterwards re-adapted by Foote as the 'Liar', and in its last form, withanother change or two, has been revived at times with great success. Itis worth while to note how Steele dealt with the story of this piece.Its original is a play by Alarcon, which Corneille at first supposed tohave been a play by Lope de Vega. Alarcon, or, to give him his fullstyle, Don Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza, was a Mexican-born Spaniardof a noble family which had distinguished itself in Mexico from the timeof the conquest, and took its name of Alarcon from a village in NewCastile. The poet was a humpbacked dwarf, a thorough, but ratherhaughty, Spanish gentleman, poet and wit, who wrote in an unusually pureSpanish style; a man of the world, too, who came to Spain in or aboutthe year 1622, and held the very well-paid office of reporter to theRoyal Council of the Indies. When Alarcon, in 1634, was chosen by theCourt to write a festival drama, and, at the same time, publishing thesecond part of his dramatic works, vehemently reclaimed plays for which,under disguised names, some of his contemporaries had taken credit tothemselves, there was an angry combination against him, in which Lope deVega, Gongora, and Quevedo were found taking part. All that Alarconwrote was thoroughly his own, but editors of the 17th century boldlypassed over his claims to honour, and distributed his best works amongplays of other famous writers, chiefly those of Rojas and Lope de Vega.This was what deceived Corneille, and caused him to believe and say thatAlarcon's 'la Verdad sospechosa', on which, in 1642, he founded his'Menteur', was a work of Lope de Vega's. Afterwards Corneille learnt howthere had been in this matter lying among editors. He gave to Alarconthe honour due, and thenceforth it is chiefly by this play that Alarconhas been remembered out of Spain. In Spain, when in 1852 Don JuanHartzenbusch edited Alarcon's comedies for the Biblioteca de AutoresEspanoles, he had to remark on the unjust neglect of that good author inSpain also, where the poets and men of letters had long wished in vainfor a complete edition of his works. Lope de Vega, it may be added, wasreally the author of a sequel to 'la Verdad sospechosa', which Corneilleadapted also as a sequel to his 'Menteur', but it was even poorer thansuch sequels usually are.

The 'Lying Lover' in Alarcon's play is a Don Garcia fresh from hisstudies in Salamanca, and Steele's Latine first appears there as aTristan, the gracioso of old Spanish comedy. The two ladies are aJacinta and Lucrecia. Alarcon has in his light and graceful play no lessthan three heavy fathers, of a Spanish type, one of whom, the father ofLucrecia, brings about Don Garcia's punishment by threatening to killhim if he will not marry his daughter; and so the Liar is punished forhis romancing by a marriage with the girl he does not care for, and notmarrying the girl he loves.

Corneille was merciful, and in the fifth act bred in his 'Menteur' a newfancy for Lucrece, so that the marriage at cross purposes was ratheragreeable to him.

Steele, in adapting the 'Menteur' as his 'Lying Lover', altered theclose in sharp accordance with that 'just regard to a reforming age,'which caused him (adapting a line in his 'Procession' then unprinted) towrite in his Prologue to it, 'Pleasure must still have something that'ssevere.' Having translated Corneille's translations of Garcia andTristan (Dorante and Cliton) into Young Bookwit and Latine, hetransformed the servant into a college friend, mumming as servantbecause, since 'a prating servant is necessary in intrigues,' the twohad 'cast lots who should be the other's footman for the presentexpedition.' Then he adapted the French couplets into pleasant prosecomedy, giving with a light touch the romancing of feats of war and ofan entertainment on the river, but at last he turned desperatelyserious, and sent his Young Bookwit to Newgate on a charge of killingthe gentleman--here called Lovemore--who was at last to win the hand ofthe lady whom the Liar loved. In his last act, opening in Newgate,Steele started with blank verse, and although Lovemore of course was notdead, and Young Bookwit got at last more than a shadow of a promise ofthe other lady in reward for his repentance, the changes in constructionof the play took it beyond the bounds of comedy, and were, in fact,excellent morality but not good art. And this is what Steele means whenhe says that he had his play damned for its piety.

With that strong regard for the drama which cannot well be wanting tothe man who has an artist's vivid sense of life, Steele never withdrewhis good will from the players, never neglected to praise a good play,and, I may add, took every fair occasion of suggesting to the town thesubtlety of Shakespeare's genius. But he now ceased to write comedies,until towards the close of his life he produced with a remarkablesuccess his other play, the 'Conscious Lovers'. And of that, by the way,Fielding made his Parson Adams say that 'Cato' and the 'ConsciousLovers' were the only plays he ever heard of, fit for a Christian toread, 'and, I must own, in the latter there are some things almostsolemn enough for a sermon.'

Perhaps it was about this time that Addison wrote his comedy of the'Drummer', which had been long in his possession when Steele, who hadbecome a partner in the management of Drury Lane Theatre, drew it fromobscurity, suggested a few changes in it, and produced it--not openly asAddison's--upon the stage. The published edition of it was recommendedalso by a preface from Steele in which he says that he liked thisauthor's play the better

'for the want of those studied similies and repartees which we, who have writ before him, have thrown into our plays, to indulge and gain upon a false taste that has prevailed for many years in the British theatre. I believe the author would have condescended to fall into this way a little more than he has, had he before the writing of it been often present at theatrical representations. I was confirmed in my thoughts of the play by the opinion of better judges to whom it was communicated, who observed that the scenes were drawn after Moliere's manner, and that an easy and natural vein of humour ran through the whole. I do not question but the reader will discover this, and see many beauties that escaped the audience; the touches being too delicate for every taste in a popular assembly. My brother-sharers' (in the Drury Lane patent) 'were of opinion, at the first reading of it, that it was like a picture in which the strokes were not strong enough to appear at a distance. As it is not in the common way of writing, the approbation was at first doubtful, but has risen every time it has been acted, and has given an opportunity in several of its parts for as just and good actions as ever I saw on the stage.'

Addison's comedy was not produced till 1715, the year after hisunsuccessful attempt to revive the 'Spectator', which produced what iscalled the eighth volume of that work. The play, not known to be his,was so ill spoken of that he kept the authorship a secret to the last,and Tickell omitted it from the collection of his patron's works. ButSteele knew what was due to his friend, and in 1722 manfully republishedthe piece as Addison's, with a dedication to Congreve and censure ofTickell for suppressing it. If it be true that the 'Drummer' made nofigure on the stage though excellently acted, 'when I observe this,'said Steele, 'I say a much harder thing of this than of the comedy.'Addison's Drummer is a gentleman who, to forward his suit to a soldier'swidow, masquerades as the drumbeating ghost of her husband in hercountry house, and terrifies a self-confident, free-thinking townexquisite, another suitor, who believes himself brought face to facewith the spirit world, in which he professes that he can't believe. 'Formy part, child, I have made myself easy in those points.' The characterof a free-thinking exquisite is drawn from life without exaggeration,but with more than a touch of the bitter contempt Addison felt for theatheistic coxcomb, with whom he was too ready to confound the sincerequestioner of orthodox opinion. The only passages of his in the'Spectator' that border on intolerance are those in which he deals withthe free-thinker; but it should not be forgotten that the commonest typeof free-thinker in Queen Anne's time was not a thoughtful man whobattled openly with doubt and made an independent search for truth, butan idler who repudiated thought and formed his character upon traditionof the Court of Charles the Second. And throughout the 'Spectator' wemay find a Christian under-tone in Addison's intolerance of infidelity,which is entirely wanting when the moralist is Eustace Budgell. Two orthree persons in the comedy of the 'Drummer' give opportunity for goodcharacter-painting in the actor, and on a healthy stage, before anaudience able to discriminate light touches of humour and to enjoyunstrained although well-marked expression of varieties of character,the 'Drummer' would not fail to be a welcome entertainment.

But our sketch now stands at the year 1705, when Steele had ceased for atime to write comedies. Addison's 'Campaign' had brought him fame, andperhaps helped him to pay, as he now did, his College debts, withinterest. His 'Remarks on Italy', now published, were, as Tickell says,'at first but indifferently relished by the bulk of readers;' and his'Drummer' probably was written and locked in his desk. There were nowsuch days of intercourse as Steele looked back to when with undyingfriendship he wrote in the preface to that edition of the 'Drummer'produced by him after Addison's death:

'He was above all men in that talent we call humour, and enjoyed it in such perfection, that I have often reflected, after a night spent with him apart from all the world, that I had had the pleasure of conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who had all their wit and nature, heightened with humour more exquisite and delightful than any other man ever possessed.' And again in the same Preface, Steele dwelt upon 'that smiling mirth, that delicate satire and genteel raillery, which appeared in Mr. Addison when he was free from that remarkable bashfulness which is a cloak that hides and muffles merit; and his abilities were covered only by modesty, which doubles the beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem to all that are concealed.'

Addison had the self-consciousness of a sensitive and speculative mind.This, with a shy manner among those with whom he was not intimate,passed for cold self-assertion. The 'little senate' of his intimatefriends was drawn to him by its knowledge of the real warmth of hisnature. And his friendships, like his religion, influenced his judgment.His geniality that wore a philosophic cloak before the world, caused himto abandon himself in the 'Spectator', even more unreservedly thanSteele would have done, to iterated efforts for the help of a friendlike Ambrose Philips, whose poems to eminent babies, 'little subject,little wit,' gave rise to the name of Namby-pamby. Addison's quietnesswith strangers was against a rapid widening of his circle of familiarfriends, and must have made the great-hearted friendship of Steele asmuch to him as his could be to Steele. In very truth it 'doubled all hisstore.' Steele's heart was open to enjoyment of all kindly intercoursewith men. In after years, as expression of thought in the literature ofnations gained freedom and sincerity, two types of literature wereformed from the types of mind which Addison and Steele may be said tohave in some measure represented. Each sought advance towards a betterlight, one part by dwelling on the individual duties andresponsibilities of man, and his relation to the infinite; the other byespecial study of man's social ties and liberties, and his relation tothe commonwealth of which he is a member. Goethe, for instance, inclinedto one study; Schiller to the other; and every free mind will inclineprobably to one or other of these centres of opinion. Addison was a coldpolitician because he was most himself when analyzing principles ofthought, and humours, passions, duties of the individual. Steele, on thecontrary, braved ruin for his convictions as a politician, because hissocial nature turned his earnestness into concern for the well-being ofhis country, and he lived in times when it was not yet certain that thenewly-secured liberties were also finally secured. The party was strongthat desired to re-establish ancient tyrannies, and the Queen herselfwas hardly on the side of freedom.

In 1706, the date of the union between England and Scotland, Whiginfluence had been strengthened by the elections of the preceding year,and Addison was, early in 1706, made Under-Secretary of State to SirCharles Hedges, a Tory, who was superseded before the end of the year byMarlborough's son-in-law, the Earl of Sunderland, a Whig under whomAddison, of course, remained in office, and who was, thenceforth, hisactive patron. In the same year the opera of _Rosamond_ was produced,with Addison's libretto. It was but the third, or indeed the second,year of operas in England, for we can hardly reckon as forming a year ofopera the Italian intermezzi and interludes of singing and dancing,performed under Clayton's direction, at York Buildings, in 1703. In1705, Clayton's _Arsinoe_, adapted and translated from the Italian, wasproduced at Drury Lane. Buononcini's _Camilla_ was given at the house inthe Haymarket, and sung in two languages, the heroine's part being inEnglish and the hero's in Italian. Thomas Clayton, a second-ratemusician, but a man with literary tastes, who had been introducer of theopera to London, argued that the words of an opera should be not onlyEnglish, but the best of English, and that English music ought toillustrate good home-grown literature. Addison and Steele agreedheartily in this. Addison was persuaded to write words for an opera byClayton--his _Rosamond_--and Steele was persuaded afterwards tospeculate in some sort of partnership with Clayton's efforts to setEnglish poetry to music in the entertainments at York Buildings, thoughhis friend Hughes warned him candidly that Clayton was not much of amusician. _Rosamond_ was a failure of Clayton's and not a success ofAddison's. There is poor jesting got by the poet from a comic SirTrusty, who keeps Rosamond's bower, and has a scolding wife. But thereis a happy compliment to Marlborough in giving to King Henry a vision atWoodstock of the glory to come for England, and in a scenic realizationof it by the rising of Blenheim Palace, the nation's gift toMarlborough, upon the scene of the Fair Rosamond story. Indeed there canbe no doubt that it was for the sake of the scene at Woodstock, and theopportunity thus to be made, that Rosamond was chosen for the subject ofthe opera. Addison made Queen Eleanor give Rosamond a narcotic insteadof a poison, and thus he achieved the desired happy ending to an opera.

Believe your Rosamond alive.

'King.' O happy day! O pleasing view! My Queen forgives--

'Queen.' --My lord is true.

'King.' No more I'll change.

'Queen.' No more I'll grieve.

'Both.' But ever thus united live.

That is to say, for three days, the extent of the life of the opera. Butthe literary Under-Secretary had saved his political dignity with thestage tribute to Marlborough, which backed the closet praise in the'Campaign.'

In May, 1707, Steele received the office of Gazetteer, until then worthL60, but presently endowed by Harley with a salary of L300 a-year. Atabout the same time he was made one of the gentlemen ushers to QueenAnne's husband, Prince George of Denmark. In the same year Steelemarried. Of his most private life before this date little is known. Hehad been married to a lady from Barbadoes, who died in a few months.From days referred to in the 'Christian Hero' he derived a daughter ofwhom he took fatherly care. In 1707 Steele, aged about 35, married Miss(or, as ladies come of age were then called, Mrs.) Mary Scurlock, aged29. It was a marriage of affection on both sides. Steele had from hisfirst wife an estate in Barbadoes, which produced, after payment of theinterest on its encumbrances, L670 a-year. His appointment as Gazetteer,less the L45 tax on it, was worth L255 a-year, and his appointment onthe Prince Consort's household another hundred. Thus the income uponwhich Steele married was rather more than a thousand a-year, and MissScurlock's mother had an estate of about L330 a-year. Mary Scurlock hadbeen a friend of Steele's first wife, for before marriage she recallsSteele to her mother's mind by saying, 'It is the survivor of the personto whose funeral I went in my illness.'

'Let us make our regards to each other,' Steele wrote just before marriage, 'mutual and unchangeable, that whilst the world around us is enchanted with the false satisfactions of vagrant desires, our persons may be shrines to each other, and sacred to conjugal faith, unreserved confidence, and heavenly society.'

There remains also a prayer written by Steele before first taking thesacrament with his wife, after marriage. There are also letters andlittle notes written by Steele to his wife, treasured by her love, andprinted by a remorseless antiquary, blind to the sentence in one of thefirst of them:

'I beg of you to shew my letters to no one living, but let us be contented with one another's thoughts upon our words and actions, without the intervention of other people, who cannot judge of so delicate a circumstance as the commerce between man and wife.'

But they are printed for the frivolous to laugh at and the wise tohonour. They show that even in his most thoughtless or most anxiousmoments the social wit, the busy patriot, remembered his 'dear Prue,'and was her lover to the end. Soon after marriage, Steele took his wifeto a boarding-school in the suburbs, where they saw a young lady forwhom Steele showed an affection that caused Mrs. Steele to ask, whethershe was not his daughter. He said that she was. 'Then,' said Mrs.Steele, 'I beg she may be mine too.' Thenceforth she lived in their homeas Miss Ousley, and was treated as a daughter by Steele's wife. Surelythis was a woman who deserved the love that never swerved from her. Truehusband and true friend, he playfully called Addison her rival. In the_Spectator_ there is a paper of Steele's (No. 142) representing some ofhis own love-letters as telling what a man said and should be able tosay of his wife after forty years of marriage. Seven years aftermarriage he signs himself, 'Yours more than you can imagine, or Iexpress.' He dedicates to her a volume of the _Lady's Library_, andwrites of her ministrations to him:

'if there are such beings as guardian angels, thus are they employed. I will no more believe one of them more good in its inclinations than I can conceive it more charming in its form than my wife.'

In the year before her death he was signing his letters with 'God blessyou!' and 'Dear Prue, eternally yours.' That Steele made it a duty ofhis literary life to contend against the frivolous and vicious ridiculeof the ties of marriage common in his day, and to maintain their sacredhonour and their happiness, readers of the 'Spectator' cannot fail tofind.

Steele, on his marriage in 1707, took a house in Bury Street, St.James's, and in the following year went to a house at Hampton, which hecalled in jest the Hovel. Addison had lent him a thousand pounds forcosts of furnishing and other immediate needs. This was repaid within ayear, and when, at the same time, his wife's mother was proposing asettlement of her money beneficial to himself, Steele replied that hewas far from desiring, if he should survive his wife, 'to turn thecurrent of the estate out of the channel it would have been in, had Inever come into the family.' Liberal always of his own to others, he wassometimes without a guinea, and perplexed by debt. But he defrauded noman. When he followed his Prue to the grave he was in no man's debt,though he left all his countrymen his debtors, and he left more thantheir mother's fortune to his two surviving children. One died ofconsumption a year afterwards, the other married one of the WelshJudges, afterwards Lord Trevor.

The friendship--equal friendship--between Steele and Addison was asunbroken as the love between Steele and his wife. Petty tales may havebeen invented or misread. In days of malicious personality Steele bravedthe worst of party spite, and little enough even slander found to throwagainst him. Nobody in their lifetime doubted the equal strength andsincerity of the relationship between the two friends. Steele was nofollower of Addison's. Throughout life he went his own way, leadingrather than following; first as a playwright; first in conception andexecution of the scheme of the 'Tatler', 'Spectator', and 'Guardian';following his own sense of duty against Addison's sense of expediency inpassing from the 'Guardian' to the 'Englishman', and so to energeticmovement upon perilous paths as a political writer, whose whole heartwas with what he took to be the people's cause.

When Swift had been writing to Addison that he thought Steele 'thevilest of mankind,' in writing of this to Swift, Steele complained thatthe 'Examiner',--in which Swift had a busy hand,--said Addison had'bridled him in point of politics,' adding,

'This was ill hinted both in relation to him and me. I know no party; but the truth of the question is what I will support as well as I can, when any man I honour is attacked.'

John Forster, whose keen insight into the essentials of literature ledhim to write an essay upon each of the two great founders of the latestperiod of English literature, Defoe and Steele, has pointed out in hismasterly essay upon Steele that Swift denies having spoken of Steele asbridled by his friend, and does so in a way that frankly admits Steele'sright to be jealous of the imputation. Mr. Forster justly adds thatthroughout Swift's intimate speech to Stella,

'whether his humours be sarcastic or polite, the friendship of Steele and Addison is for ever suggesting some annoyance to himself, some mortification, some regret, but never once the doubt that it was not intimate and sincere, or that into it entered anything inconsistent with a perfect equality.'

Six months after Addison's death Steele wrote (in No. 12 of the'Theatre', and I am again quoting facts cited by John Forster),

'that there never was a more strict friendship than between himself and Addison, nor had they ever any difference but what proceeded from their different way of pursuing the same thing; the one waited and stemmed the torrent, while the other too often plunged into it; but though they thus had lived for some years past, shunning each other, they still preserved the most passionate concern for their mutual welfare; and when they met they were as unreserved as boys, and talked of the greatest affairs, upon which they saw where they differed, without pressing (what they knew impossible) to convert each other.'

As to the substance or worth of what thus divided them, Steele only addsthe significant expression of his hope that, if his family is the worse,his country may be the better, 'for the mortification _he_ hasundergone.'

Such, then, was the Friendship of which the 'Spectator' is the abidingMonument. The 'Spectator' was a modified continuation of the 'Tatler',and the 'Tatler' was suggested by a portion of Defoe's 'Review'. The'Spectator' belongs to the first days of a period when the people atlarge extended their reading power into departments of knowledgeformerly unsought by them, and their favour was found generally to bemore desirable than that of the most princely patron. This period shoulddate from the day in 1703 when the key turned upon Defoe in Newgate, theyear of the production of Steele's 'Tender Husband', and the time whenAddison was in Holland on the way home from his continental travels.Defoe was then forty-two years old, Addison and Steele being abouteleven years younger.

In the following year, 1704, the year of Blenheim--Defoe issued, on the19th of February, No. 1 of 'A Weekly Review of the Affairs of France:Purg'd from the Errors and Partiality of 'News-Writers' and'Petty-Statesmen', of all Sides,' and in the introductory sketch of itsplan, said:

'After our Serious Matters are over, we shall at the end of every Paper, Present you with a little Diversion, as anything occurs to make the World Merry; and whether Friend or Foe, one Party or another, if anything happens so scandalous as to require an open Reproof, the World may meet with it there.'

Here is the first 'little Diversion'; the germ of 'Tatlers' and'Spectators' which in after years amused and edified the town.

'Mercure Scandale:

or,

ADVICE from the Scandalous CLUB. 'Translated out of French'.

This Society is a Corporation long since established in 'Paris', and we cannot compleat our Advices from 'France', without entertaining the World with everything we meet with from that Country.

And, tho Corresponding with the Queens Enemies is prohibited; yet since the Matter will be so honest, as only to tell the World of what everybody will own to be scandalous, we reckon we shall be welcome.

This Corporation has been set up some months, and opend their first Sessions about last 'Bartholomew' Fair; but having not yet obtaind a Patent, they have never, till now, made their Resolves publick.

The Business of this Society is to censure the Actions of Men, not of Parties, and in particular, those Actions which are made publick so by their Authors, as to be, in their own Nature, an Appeal to the general Approbation.

They do not design to expose Persons but things; and of them, none but such as more than ordinarily deserve it; they who would not be censurd by this Assembly, are desired to act with caution enough, not to fall under their Hands; for they resolve to treat Vice, and Villanous Actions, with the utmost Severity.

The First considerable Matter that came before this Society, was about 'Bartholomew' Fair; but the Debates being long, they were at last adjourned to the next Fair, when we suppose it will be decided; so being not willing to trouble the World with anything twice over, we refer that to next 'August'.

On the 10th of September last, there was a long Hearing, before the Club, of a Fellow that said he had killd the Duke of 'Bavaria'. Now as David punishd the Man that said he had killd King 'Saul', whether it was so or no, twas thought this Fellow ought to be delivered up to Justice, tho the Duke of 'Bavaria' was alive.

Upon the whole, twas voted a scandalous Thing, That News. Writers shoud kill Kings and Princes, and bring them to life again at pleasure; and to make an Example of this Fellow, he was dismissd, upon Condition he should go to the Queens-bench once a Day, and bear Fuller, his Brother of the Faculty, company two hours for fourteen Days together; which cruel Punishment was executed with the utmost Severity.

The Club has had a great deal of trouble about the News-Writers, who have been continually brought before them for their ridiculous Stories, and imposing upon Mankind; and tho the Proceedings have been pretty tedious, we must give you the trouble of a few of them in our next.

The addition to the heading, 'Translated out of French,' appears only inNo. 1, and the first title 'Mercure Scandale' (adopted from a Frenchbook published about 1681) having been much criticized for its grammarand on other grounds, was dropped in No. 18. Thenceforth Defoe'spleasant comment upon passing follies appeared under the single head of'Advice from the Scandalous Club.' Still the verbal Critics exercisedtheir wits upon the title.

'We have been so often on the Defence of our Title,' says Defoe, in No. 38, 'that the world begins to think Our Society wants Employment ... If Scandalous must signify nothing but Personal Scandal, respecting the Subject of which it is predicated; we desire those gentlemen to answer for us how 'Post-Man' or 'Post-Boy' can signify a News-Paper, the Post Man or Post Boy being in all my reading properly and strictly applicable, not to the Paper, but to the Person bringing or carrying the News? Mercury also is, if I understand it, by a Transmutation of Meaning, from a God turned into a Book--From hence our Club thinks they have not fair Play, in being deny'd the Privilege of making an Allegory as well as other People.'

In No. 46 Defoe made, in one change more, a whimsical half concession ofa syllable, by putting a sign of contraction in its place, andthenceforth calling this part of his Review, Advice from the ScandalClub. Nothing can be more evident than the family likeness between thisforefather of the 'Tatler' and 'Spectator' and its more familiardescendants. There is a trick of voice common to all, and some papers ofDefoe's might have been written for the 'Spectator'. Take the littleallegory, for instance, in No. 45, which tells of a desponding youngLady brought before the Society, as found by Rosamond's Pond in the Parkin a strange condition, taken by the mob for a lunatic, and whoseclothes were all out of fashion, but whose face, when it was seen,astonished the whole society by its extraordinary sweetness and majesty.She told how she had been brought to despair, and her name proved tobe--Modesty. In letters, questions, and comments also which might betaken from Defoe's Monthly Supplementary Journal to the Advice from theScandal Club, we catch a likeness to the spirit of the 'Tatler' and'Spectator' now and then exact. Some censured Defoe for not confininghimself to the weightier part of his purpose in establishing the'Review'. He replied, in the Introduction to his first MonthlySupplement, that many men

'care but for a little reading at a time,' and said, 'thus we wheedle them in, if it may be allow'd that Expression, to the Knowledge of the World, who rather than take more Pains, would be content with their Ignorance, and search into nothing.'

Single-minded, quick-witted, and prompt to act on the first suggestionof a higher point of usefulness to which he might attain, Steele saw themind of the people ready for a new sort of relation to its writers, andhe followed the lead of Defoe. But though he turned from the morefrivolous temper of the enfeebled playhouse audience, to commune in freeair with the country at large, he took fresh care for the restraint ofhis deep earnestness within the bounds of a cheerful, unpretendinginfluence. Drop by drop it should fall, and its strength lie in itspersistence. He would bring what wit he had out of the playhouse, andspeak his mind, like Defoe, to the people themselves every post-day. Buthe would affect no pedantry of moralizing, he would appeal to nopassions, he would profess himself only 'a Tatler.' Might he not use, hethought, modestly distrustful of the charm of his own mind, some of thenews obtained by virtue of the office of Gazetteer that Harley had givenhim, to bring weight and acceptance to writing of his which he valuedonly for the use to which it could be put. For, as he himself truly saysin the 'Tatler',

'wit, if a man had it, unless it be directed to some useful end, is but a wanton, frivolous quality; all that one should value himself upon in this kind is that he had some honourable intention in it.'

Swift, not then a deserter to the Tories, was a friend of Steele's, who,when the first 'Tatler' appeared, had been amusing the town at theexpense of John Partridge, astrologer and almanac-maker, with'Predictions for the year 1708,' professing to be written by IsaacBickerstaff, Esq. The first prediction was of the death of Partridge,

'on the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever.'

Swift answered himself, and also published in due time

'The Accomplishment of the first of Mr. Bickerstaff's Predictions: being an account of the death of Mr. Partridge, the almanack-maker, upon the 29th instant.'

Other wits kept up the joke, and, in his next year's almanac (that for1709), Partridge advertised that,

'whereas it has been industriously given out by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., and others, to prevent the sale of this year's almanack, that John Partridge is dead, this may inform all his loving countrymen that he is still living, in health, and they are knaves that reported it otherwise.'

Steele gave additional lightness to the touch of his 'Tatler', whichfirst appeared on the 12th of April, 1709, by writing in the name ofIsaac Bickerstaff, and carrying on the jest, that was to his seriousmind a blow dealt against prevailing superstition. Referring in hisfirst 'Tatler' to this advertisement of Partridge's, he said of it,

'I have in another place, and in a paper by itself, sufficiently convinced this man that he is dead; and if he has any shame, I do not doubt but that by this time he owns it to all his acquaintance. For though the legs and arms and whole body of that man may still appear and perform their animal functions, yet since, as I have elsewhere observed, his art is gone, the man is gone.'

To Steele, indeed, the truth was absolute, that a man is but what he cando.

In this spirit, then, Steele began the 'Tatler', simply considering thathis paper was to be published 'for the use of the good people ofEngland,' and professing at the outset that he was an author writing forthe public, who expected from the public payment for his work, and thathe preferred this course to gambling for the patronage of men in office.Having pleasantly shown the sordid spirit that underlies themountebank's sublime professions of disinterestedness,

'we have a contempt,' he says, 'for such paltry barterers, and have therefore all along informed the public that we intend to give them our advices for our own sakes, and are labouring to make our lucubrations come to some price in money, for our more convenient support in the service of the public. It is certain that many other schemes have been proposed to me, as a friend offered to show me in a treatise he had writ, which he called, "The whole Art of Life; or, The Introduction to Great Men, illustrated in a Pack of Cards." But being a novice at all manner of play, I declined the offer.'

Addison took these cards, and played an honest game with themsuccessfully. When, at the end of 1708, the Earl of Sunderland,Marlborough's son-in-law, lost his secretaryship, Addison lost his placeas under-secretary; but he did not object to go to Ireland as chiefsecretary to Lord Wharton, the new Lord-lieutenant, an active party man,a leader on the turf with reputation for indulgence after business hoursaccording to the fashion of the court of Charles II.

Lord Wharton took to Ireland Clayton to write him musicalentertainments, and a train of parasites of quality. He was a greatborough-monger, and is said at one critical time to have returned thirtymembers. He had no difficulty, therefore, in finding Addison a seat, andmade him in that year, 1709, M.P. for Malmesbury. Addison only onceattempted to speak in the House of Commons, and then, embarrassed byencouraging applause that welcomed him he stammered and sat down. Butwhen, having laid his political cards down for a time, and at ease inhis own home, pen in hand, he brought his sound mind and quick humour tothe aid of his friend Steele, he came with him into direct relation withthe English people. Addison never gave posterity a chance of knowingwhat was in him till, following Steele's lead, he wrote those papers in'Tatler', 'Spectator', and 'Guardian', wherein alone his genius abideswith us, and will abide with English readers to the end. The 'Tatler',the 'Spectator', and the 'Guardian' were, all of them, Steele's, begunand ended by him at his sole discretion. In these three journals Steelewas answerable for 510 papers; Addison for 369. Swift wrote two papers,and sent about a dozen fragments. Congreve wrote one article in the'Tatler'; Pope wrote thrice for the 'Spectator', and eight times for the'Guardian'. Addison, who was in Ireland when the 'Tatler' firstappeared, only guessed the authorship by an expression in an earlynumber; and it was not until eighty numbers had been issued, and thecharacter of the new paper was formed and established, that Addison, onhis return to London, joined the friend who, with his usual completeabsence of the vanity of self-assertion, finally ascribed to the ally hedearly loved, the honours of success.

It was the kind of success Steele had desired--a widely-diffusedinfluence for good. The 'Tatlers' were penny papers published threetimes a week, and issued also for another halfpenny with a blankhalf-sheet for transmission by post, when any written scraps of theday's gossip that friend might send to friend could be included. It wasthrough these, and the daily 'Spectators' which succeeded them, that thepeople of England really learnt to read. The few leaves of sound reasonand fancy were but a light tax on uncultivated powers of attention.Exquisite grace and true kindliness, here associated with familiar waysand common incidents of everyday life, gave many an honest man freshsense of the best happiness that lies in common duties honestlyperformed, and a fresh energy, free as Christianity itself frommalice--for so both Steele and Addison meant that it should be--inopposing themselves to the frivolities and small frauds on theconscience by which manliness is undermined.

A pamphlet by John Gay--'The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to aFriend in the Country'--was dated May 3, 1711, about two months afterthe 'Spectator' had replaced the 'Tatler'. And thus Gay represents thebest talk of the town about these papers:

"Before I proceed further in the account of our weekly papers, it will be necessary to inform you that at the beginning of the winter, to the infinite surprise of all the Town, Mr. Steele flung up his 'Tatler', and instead of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, subscribed himself Richard Steele to the last of those papers, after a handsome compliment to the Town for their kind acceptance of his endeavours to divert them.

The chief reason he thought fit to give for his leaving off writing was, that having been so long looked on in all public places and companies as the Author of those papers, he found that his most intimate friends and acquaintance were in pain to speak or act before him.

The Town was very far from being satisfied with this reason, and most people judged the true cause to be, either

That he was quite spent, and wanted matter to continue his undertaking any longer; or That he laid it down as a sort of submission to, and composition with, the Government for some past offences; or, lastly, That he had a mind to vary his Shape, and appear again in some new light.

However that were, his disappearance seemed to be bewailed as some general calamity. Every one wanted so agreeable an amusement, and the Coffee-houses began to be sensible that the Esquire's 'Lucubrations' alone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers put together.

It must indeed be confessed that never man threw up his pen, under stronger temptations to have employed it longer. His reputation was at a greater height, than I believe ever any living author's was before him. It is reasonable to suppose that his gains were proportionably considerable. Every one read him with pleasure and good-will; and the Tories, in respect to his other good qualities, had almost forgiven his unaccountable imprudence in declaring against them.

Lastly, it was highly improbable that, if he threw off a Character, the ideas of which were so strongly impressed in every one's mind, however finely he might write in any new form, that he should meet with the same reception.

To give you my own thoughts of this gentleman's writings I shall, in the first place, observe, that there is a noble difference between him and all the rest of our gallant and polite authors. The latter have endeavoured to please the Age by falling in with them, and encouraging them in their fashionable vices and false notions of things. It would have been a jest, some time since, for a man to have asserted that anything witty could be said in praise of a married state, or that Devotion and Virtue were any way necessary to the character of a Fine Gentleman. 'Bickerstaff' ventured to tell the Town that they were a parcel of fops, fools, and coquettes; but in such a manner as even pleased them, and made them more than half inclined to believe that he spoke truth.

Instead of complying with the false sentiments or vicious tastes of the Age--either in morality, criticism, or good breeding--he has boldly assured them that they were altogether in the wrong; and commanded them, with an authority which perfectly well became him, to surrender themselves to his arguments for Virtue and Good Sense.

It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had on the Town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished or given a very great check to; how much countenance they have added to Virtue and Religion; how many people they have rendered happy, by shewing them it was their own fault if they were not so; and, lastly, how entirely they have convinced our young fops and young fellows of the value and advantages of Learning.

He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants and fools, and discovered the true method of making it amiable and lovely to all mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a most welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on the Change. Accordingly there is not a Lady at Court, nor a Banker in Lombard Street, who is not verily persuaded that Captain Steele is the greatest scholar and best Casuist of any man in England.

Lastly, his writings have set all our Wits and men of letters on a new way of thinking, of which they had little or no notion before: and, although we cannot say that any of them have come up to the beauties of the original, I think we may venture to affirm, that every one of them writes and thinks much more justly than they did some time since.

The vast variety of subjects which Mr. Steele has treated of, in so different manners, and yet all so perfectly well, made the World believe that it was impossible they should all come from the same hand. This set every one upon guessing who was the Esquire's friend? and most people at first fancied it must be Doctor Swift; but it is now no longer a secret, that his only great and constant assistant was Mr. Addison.

This is that excellent friend to whom Mr. Steele owes so much; and who refuses to have his name set before those pieces, which the greatest pens in England would be proud to own. Indeed, they could hardly add to this Gentleman's reputation: whose works in Latin and English poetry long since convinced the World, that he was the greatest Master in Europe in those two languages.

I am assured, from good hands, that all the visions, and other tracts of that way of writing, with a very great number of the most exquisite pieces of wit and raillery through the 'Lucubrations' are entirely of this Gentleman's composing: which may, in some measure, account for that different Genius, which appears in the winter papers, from those of the summer; at which time, as the 'Examiner' often hinted, this friend of Mr. Steele was in Ireland.

Mr. Steele confesses in his last Volume of the 'Tatlers' that he is obliged to Dr. Swift for his 'Town Shower', and the 'Description of the Morn', with some other hints received from him in private conversation.

I have also heard that several of those 'Letters', which came as from unknown hands, were written by Mr. Henley: which is an answer to your query, 'Who those friends are whom Mr. Steele speaks of in his last 'Tatler?''

But to proceed with my account of our other papers. The expiration of 'Bickerstaff's Lucubrations' was attended with much the same consequences as the death of Meliboeus's 'Ox' in Virgil: as the latter engendered swarms of bees, the former immediately produced whole swarms of little satirical scribblers.

One of these authors called himself the 'Growler', and assured us that, to make amends for Mr. Steele's silence, he was resolved to 'growl' at us weekly, as long as we should think fit to give him any encouragement. Another Gentleman, with more modesty, called his paper the 'Whisperer'; and a third, to please the Ladies, christened his the 'Tell tale'.

At the same-time came out several 'Tatlers'; each of which, with equal truth and wit, assured us that he was the genuine 'Isaac Bickerstaff'.

It may be observed that when the 'Esquire' laid down his pen; though he could not but foresee that several scribblers would soon snatch it up, which he might (one would think) easily have prevented: he scorned to take any further care about it, but left the field fairly open to any worthy successor. Immediately, some of our Wits were for forming themselves into a Club, headed by one Mr. Harrison, and trying how they could shoot in this Bow of Ulysses; but soon found that this sort of writing requires so fine and particular a manner of thinking, with so exact a knowledge of the World, as must make them utterly despair of success.

They seemed indeed at first to think that what was only the garnish of the former 'Tatlers', was that which recommended them; and not those Substantial Entertainments which they everywhere abound in. According they were continually talking of their 'Maid', 'Night Cap', 'Spectacles', and Charles Lillie. However there were, now and then, some faint endeavours at Humour and sparks of Wit: which the Town, for want of better entertainment, was content to hunt after through a heap of impertinences; but even those are, at present, become wholly invisible and quite swallowed up in the blaze of the 'Spectator'.

You may remember, I told you before, that one cause assigned for the laying down the 'Tatler' was, Want of Matter; and, indeed, this was the prevailing opinion in Town: when we were surprised all at once by a paper called the 'Spectator', which was promised to be continued every day; and was written in so excellent a style, with so nice a judgment, and such a noble profusion of wit and humour, that it was not difficult to determine it could come from no other hands but those which had penned the 'Lucubrations'.

This immediately alarmed these gentlemen, who, as it is said Mr. Steele phrases it, had 'the Censorship in Commission.' They found the new 'Spectator' came on like a torrent, and swept away all before him. They despaired ever to equal him in wit, humour, or learning; which had been their true and certain way of opposing him: and therefore rather chose to fall on the Author; and to call out for help to all good Christians, by assuring them again and again that they were the First, Original, True, and undisputed 'Isaac Bickerstaff'.

Meanwhile, the 'Spectator', whom we regard as our Shelter from that flood of false wit and impertinence which was breaking in upon us, is in every one's hands; and a constant for our morning conversation at tea-tables and coffee-houses. We had at first, indeed, no manner of notion how a diurnal paper could be continued in the spirit and style of our present 'Spectators': but, to our no small surprise, we find them still rising upon us, and can only wonder from whence so prodigious a run of Wit and Learning can proceed; since some of our best judges seem to think that they have hitherto, in general, outshone even the 'Esquire's' first 'Tatlers'.

Most people fancy, from their frequency, that they must be composed by a Society: I withal assign the first places to Mr. Steele and his Friend.

So far John Gay, whose discussion of the 'Tatlers' and 'Spectators'appeared when only fifty-five numbers of the 'Spectator' had beenpublished.

There was high strife of faction; and there was real peril to thecountry by a possible turn of affairs after Queen Anne's death, thatanother Stuart restoration, in the name of divine right of kings, wouldleave rights of the people to be reconquered in civil war. The chiefs ofeither party were appealing to the people, and engaging all the wit theycould secure to fight on their side in the war of pamphlets. Steele'sheart was in the momentous issue. Both he and Addison had it in mindwhile they were blending their calm playfulness with all the clamour ofthe press. The spirit in which these friends worked, young Pope musthave felt; for after Addison had helped him in his first approach tofame by giving honour in the 'Spectator' to his 'Essay on Criticism,'and when he was thankful for that service, he contributed to the'Spectator' his 'Messiah.' Such offering clearly showed how Popeinterpreted the labour of the essayists.

In the fens of Lincolnshire the antiquary Maurice Johnson collected hisneighbours of Spalding.

'Taking care,' it is said, 'not to alarm the country gentlemen by any premature mention of antiquities, he endeavoured at first to allure them into the more flowery paths of literature. In 1709 a few of them were brought together every post-day at the coffee-house in the Abbey Yard; and after one of the party had read aloud the last published number of the 'Tatler', they proceeded to talk over the subject among themselves.'

Even in distant Perthshire

'the gentlemen met after church on Sunday to discuss the news of the week; the 'Spectators' were read as regularly as the 'Journal'.'

So the political draught of bitterness came sweetened with the wisdom ofgood-humour. The good-humour of the essayists touched with a light andkindly hand every form of affectation, and placed every-day life in thelight in which it would be seen by a natural and honest man. A sense ofthe essentials of life was assumed everywhere for the reader, who wasasked only to smile charitably at its vanities. Steele looked throughall shams to the natural heart of the Englishman, appealed to that, andfound it easily enough, even under the disguise of the young gentlemancited in the 77th 'Tatler',

'so ambitious to be thought worse than he is that in his degree of understanding he sets up for a free-thinker, and talks atheistically in coffee-houses all day, though every morning and evening, it can be proved upon him, he regularly at home says his prayers.'

But as public events led nearer to the prospect of a Jacobite triumphthat would have again brought Englishmen against each other sword tosword, there was no voice of warning more fearless than RichardSteele's. He changed the 'Spectator' for the 'Guardian', that was to be,in its plan, more free to guard the people's rights, and, standingforward more distinctly as a politician, he became member forStockbridge. In place of the 'Guardian', which he had dropped when hefelt the plan of that journal unequal to the right and full expressionof his mind, Steele took for a periodical the name of 'Englishman', andunder that name fought, with then unexampled abstinence frompersonality, against the principles upheld by Swift in his 'Examiner'.Then, when the Peace of Utrecht alarmed English patriots, Steele in abold pamphlet on 'The Crisis' expressed his dread of arbitrary power anda Jacobite succession with a boldness that cost him his seat inParliament, as he had before sacrificed to plain speaking his place ofGazetteer.

Of the later history of Steele and Addison a few words will suffice.This is not an account of their lives, but an endeavour to show whyEnglishmen must always have a living interest in the 'Spectator', theirjoint production. Steele's 'Spectator' ended with the seventh volume.The members of the Club were all disposed of, and the journal formallywound up; but by the suggestion of a future ceremony of opening the'Spectator's' mouth, a way was made for Addison, whenever he pleased, toconnect with the famous series an attempt of his own for its revival. Ayear and a half later Addison made this attempt, producing his newjournal with the old name and, as far as his contributions went, notless than the old wit and earnestness, three times a week instead ofdaily. But he kept it alive only until the completion of one volume.Addison had not Steele's popular tact as an editor. He preached, and hesuffered drier men to preach, while in his jest he now and then wrotewhat he seems to have been unwilling to acknowledge. His eighth volumecontains excellent matter, but the subjects are not always well chosenor varied judiciously, and one understands why the 'Spectator' took afirmer hold upon society when the two friends in the full strength oftheir life, aged about forty, worked together and embraced between thema wide range of human thought and feeling. It should be remembered alsothat Queen Anne died while Addison's eighth volume was appearing, andthe change in the Whig position brought him other occupation of his time.

In April, 1713, in the interval between the completion of the true'Spectator' and the appearance of the supplementary volume, Addison'stragedy of 'Cato', planned at College; begun during his foreign travels,retouched in England, and at last completed, was produced at Drury Lane.Addison had not considered it a stage play, but when it was urged thatthe time was proper for animating the public with the sentiments ofCato, he assented to its production. Apart from its real merit the playhad the advantage of being applauded by the Whigs, who saw in it a Whigpolitical ideal, and by the Tories, who desired to show that they wereas warm friends of liberty as any Whig could be.

Upon the death of Queen Anne Addison acted for a short time as secretaryto the Regency, and when George I. appointed Addison's patron, the Earlof Sunderland, to the Lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, Sunderland tookAddison with him as chief secretary. Sunderland resigned in ten months,and thus Addison's secretaryship came to an end in August, 1716. Addisonwas also employed to meet the Rebellion of 1715 by writing the'Freeholder'. He wrote under this title fifty-five papers, which werepublished twice a week between December, 1715, and June, 1716; and hewas rewarded with the post of Commissioner for Trade and Colonies. InAugust, 1716, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, mother to theyoung Earl of Warwick, of whose education he seems to have had somecharge in 1708. Addison settled upon the Countess L4000 in lieu of anestate which she gave up for his sake. Henceforth he lived chiefly atHolland House. In April, 1717, Lord Sunderland became Secretary ofState, and still mindful of Marlborough's illustrious supporter, he madeAddison his colleague. Eleven months later, ill health obliged Addisonto resign the seals; and his death followed, June 17, 1719, at the ageof 47.

Steele's political difficulties ended at the death of Queen Anne. Thereturn of the Whigs to power on the accession of George I. brought himthe office of Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; he wasalso first in the Commission of the peace for Middlesex, and was madeone of the deputy lieutenants of the county. At the request of themanagers Steele's name was included in the new patent required at DruryLane by the royal company of comedians upon the accession of a newsovereign. Steele also was returned as M.P. for Boroughbridge, inYorkshire, was writer of the Address to the king presented by theLord-lieutenant and the deputy lieutenants of Middlesex, and beingknighted on that occasion, with two other of the deputies, became in thespring of the year, 1714, Sir Richard Steele. Very few weeks after thedeath of his wife, in December, 1718, Sunderland, at a time when he hadAddison for colleague, brought in a bill for preventing any futurecreations of peers, except when an existing peerage should becomeextinct. Steele, who looked upon this as an infringement alike of theprivileges of the crown and of the rights of the subject, opposed thebill in Parliament, and started in March, 1719, a paper called the'Plebeian', in which he argued against a measure tending, he said, tothe formation of an oligarchy. Addison replied in the 'Old Whig', andthis, which occurred within a year of the close of Addison's life, wasthe main subject of political difference between them. The bill,strongly opposed, was dropped for that session, and reintroduced (afterAddison's death) in the December following, to be thrown out by theHouse of Commons.

Steele's argument against the government brought on him the hostility ofthe Duke of Newcastle, then Lord Chamberlain; and it was partly todefend himself and his brother patentees against hostile actionthreatened by the Duke, that Steele, in January, 1720, started his papercalled the 'Theatre'. But he was dispossessed of his government of thetheatre, to which a salary of L600 a-year had been attached, andsuffered by the persecution of the court until Walpole's return topower. Steele was then restored to his office, and in the followingyear, 1722, produced his most successful comedy, 'The Conscious Lovers'.After this time his health declined; his spirits were depressed. He leftLondon for Bath. His only surviving son, Eugene, born while the'Spectator' was being issued, and to whom Prince Eugene had stoodgodfather, died at the age of eleven or twelve in November, 1723. Theyounger also of his two daughters was marked for death by consumption.He was broken in health and fortune when, in 1726, he had an attack ofpalsy which was the prelude to his death. He died Sept. 1, 1729, atCarmarthen, where he had been boarding with a mercer who was his agentand receiver of rents. There is a pleasant record that

'he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper to the last; and would often be carried out, of a summer's evening, where the country lads and lasses were assembled at their rural sports,--and, with his pencil, gave an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown to the best dancer.'

Two editions of the 'Spectator', the tenth and eleventh, were publishedby Tonson in the year of Steele's death. These and the next edition,dated 1739, were without the translations of the mottos, which appear,however, in the edition of 1744. Notes were first added by Dr. Percy,the editor of the 'Reliques of Ancient Poetry', and Dr. Calder. Dr. JohnCalder, a native of Aberdeen, bred to the dissenting ministry, was forsome time keeper of Dr. Williams's Library in Redcross Street. He was acandidate for the office given to Dr. Abraham Rees, of editor andgeneral super-intendent of the new issue of Chambers's Cyclopaedia,undertaken by the booksellers in 1776, and he supplied to it some newarticles. The Duke of Northumberland warmly patronized Dr. Calder, andmade him his companion in London and at Alnwick Castle as PrivateLiterary Secretary. Dr. Thomas Percy, who had constituted himself cousinand retainer to the Percy of Northumberland, obtained his bishopric ofDromore in 1782, in the following year lost his only son, and sufferedfrom that failure in eyesight, which resulted in a total blindness.

Having become intimately acquainted with Dr. Calder when atNorthumberland House and Alnwick, Percy intrusted to him the notes hehad collected for illustrating the 'Tatler', 'Spectator', and'Guardian'. These were after-wards used, with additions by Dr. Calder,in the various editions of those works, especially in the six-volumeedition of the 'Tatler', published by John Nichols in 1786, wherePercy's notes have a P. attached to them, and Dr. Calder's are signed'Annotator.' The 'Tatler' was annotated fully, and the annotated'Tatler' has supplied some pieces of information given in the presentedition of the 'Spectator'. Percy actually edited two volumes for R.Tonson in 1764, but the work was stopped by the death of the bookseller,and the other six were added to them in 1789. They were slightlyannotated, both as regards the number and the value of the notes; butPercy and Calder lived when 'Spectator' traditions were yet fresh, andoral information was accessible as to points of personal allusion or asto the authorship of a few papers or letters which but for them mighthave remained anonymous. Their notes are those of which the substancehas run through all subsequent editions. Little, if anything, was addedto them by Bisset or Chalmers; the energies of those editors having beenchiefly directed to the preserving or multiplying of corruptions of thetext. Percy, when telling Tonson that he had completed two volumes ofthe 'Spectator', said that he had corrected 'innumerable corruptions'which had then crept in, and could have come only by misprint. Sincethat time not only have misprints been preserved and multiplied, butpunctuation has been deliberately modernized, to the destruction of thefreshness of the original style, and editors of another 'understandingage' have also taken upon themselves by many a little touch to correctAddison's style or grammar.

This volume reprints for the first time in the present century the textof the 'Spectator' as its authors left it. A good recent editioncontains in the first 18 papers, which are a fair sample of the whole,88 petty variations from the proper text (at that rate, in the wholework more than 3000) apart from the recasting of the punctuation, whichis counted as a defect only in two instances, where it has changed thesense. Chalmers's text, of 1817, was hardly better, and about two-thirdsof the whole number of corruptions had already appeared in Bisset'sedition of 1793, from which they were transferred. Thus Bisset as wellas Chalmers in the Dedication to Vol. I. turned the 'polite _parts_ oflearning' into the 'polite _arts_ of learning,' and when the silentgentleman tells us that many to whom his person is well known speak ofhim 'very currently by Mr. What-d'ye-call him,' Bisset before Chalmersrounded the sentence into 'very correctly by _the appellation_ of Mr.What-d'ye-call him.' But it seems to have been Chalmers who firstundertook to correct, in the next paper, Addison's grammar, by turning'have laughed _to have seen_' into 'have laughed _to see_' andtransformed a treaty '_with_ London and Wise,'--a firm now of historicalrepute,--for the supply of flowers to the opera, into a treaty'_between_ London and Wise,' which most people would take to be a verydifferent matter. If the present edition has its own share of misprintsand oversights, at least it inherits none; and it contains no wilfulalteration of the text.

The papers as they first appeared in the daily issue of a penny (andafter the stamp was imposed two-penny) folio half-sheet, have beenclosely compared with the first issue in guinea octavos, for which theywere revised, and with the last edition that appeared before the deathof Steele. The original text is here given precisely as it was leftafter revision by its authors; and there is shown at the same time theamount and character of the revision.

Sentences added in the reprint are placed between square brackets [ ],without any appended note.

Sentences omitted, or words altered, are shown by bracketing the revisedversion, and giving the text as it stood in the original daily issuewithin corresponding brackets as a foot-note.[1]

Thus the reader has here both the original texts of the 'Spectator'. TheEssays, as revised by their authors for permanent use, form the maintext of the present volume.

But if the words or passages in brackets be omitted; the words orpassages in corresponding foot-notes,--where there are suchfoot-notes,--being substituted for them; the text becomes throughoutthat of the 'Spectator' as it first came out in daily numbers.

As the few differences between good spelling in Queen Anne's time andgood spelling now are never of a kind to obscure the sense of a word, orlessen the enjoyment of the reader, it has been thought better to makethe reproduction perfect, and thus show not only what Steele and Addisonwrote, but how they spelt, while restoring to their style the properharmony of their own methods of punctuating, and their way of sometimesgetting emphasis by turning to account the use of capitals, which intheir hands was not wholly conventional.

The original folio numbers have been followed also in the use of_italics_ [_shown between underscored thus_] and other little details ofthe disposition of the type; for example, in the reproduction of thoserows of single inverted commas, which distinguish what a correspondentcalled the parts 'laced down the side with little c's.' [This lastdetail of formatting has not been reproduced in this file. Text Ed.]

The translation of the mottos and Latin quotations, which Steele andAddison deliberately abstained from giving, and which, as they weresince added, impede and sometimes confound and contradict the text, arehere placed in a body at the end, for those who want them. Again andagain the essayists indulge in banter on the mystery of the Latin andGreek mottos; and what confusion must enter into the mind of the unwaryreader who finds Pope's Homer quoted at the head of a 'Spectator' longbefore Addison's word of applause to the young poet's 'Essay onCriticism.' The mottos then are placed in an Appendix.

There is a short Appendix also of advertisements taken from the originalnumber of the 'Spectator', and a few others, where they seem toillustrate some point in the text, will be found among the notes.

In the large number of notes here added to a revision of thosebequeathed to us by Percy and Calder, the object has been to giveinformation which may contribute to some nearer acquaintance with thewriters of the book, and enjoyment of allusions to past manners andevents.

Finally, from the 'General Index to the Spectators, &c.,' published as aseparate volume in 1760, there has been taken what was serviceable, andadditions have been made to it with a desire to secure for this editionof the 'Spectator' the advantages of being handy for reference as wellas true to the real text.

H. M.

[Footnote 1: "Sentences omitted, or words altered;" not, of course, theimmaterial variations of spelling into which compositors slipped in theprinting office. In the 'Athenaeum' of May 12, 1877, is an answer tomisapprehensions on this head by the editor of a Clarendon Press volumeof 'Selections from Addison'.]

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

JOHN LORD SOMMERS,

BARON OF EVESHAM. [1]

My LORD,

I should not act the Part of an impartial Spectator, if I Dedicated thefollowing Papers to one who is not of the most consummate and mostacknowledged Merit.